“Then I beg thou not to go,” I said. “Not in yon ship out of hell.’ I could see that dizzyingly tail spire, its nose wreathed with low clouds, rearing beyond the abbey walls. It terrified me.
“Well,” snapped Sir Owain, “what has the monster told you?”
“He has the impudence to claim he comes not from below, but from above. From heaven itself!”
“He … an angel?”
“No. He says he is neither angel nor demon, but a member of another mortal race than mankind.”
Sir Owain caressed his smooth-shaven chin with one hand. “It could be,” he mused. “After all, if Unipeds and Centaurs and other monstrous beings exist, why not those squatty blueskins?”
“I know. Twould be reasonable enough, save that he claims to live in the sky.”
“Tell me just what he did say.”
“As you will, Sir Owain, but remember that these impieties are not mine. This Branithar insists that the earth is not flat but is a sphere hanging in space. Nay, he goes further and says the earth moves about the sun! Some of the learned ancients held similar notions, but I cannot understand what would keep the oceans from pouring off into space or—”
“Pray continue the story, Brother Parvus.”
“Well, Branithar says that the stars are other suns than ours, only very far off, and have worlds going about them even as our own does. Not even the Greeks could have swallowed such an absurdity. What kind of ignorant yokels does the creature take us for? But be this as it may, Branithar says that his people, the Wersgorix, come from one of these other worlds, one which is much like our earth. He boasts of their powers of sorcery—”
“That much is no lie,” said Sir Owain. “We’ve been trying out some of those hand weapons. We burned down three houses, a pig, and a serf ere we learned how to control them.”
I gulped, but went on: “These Wersgorix have ships which can fly between the stars. They have conquered many worlds. Their method is to subdue or wipe out any backward natives there may be. Then they settle the entire world, each Wersgor taking hundreds of thousands of acres. Their numbers are growing so fast, and they so dislike being crowded, that they must ever be seeking new worlds.
“This ship we captured was a scout, exploring in search of another place to conquer. Having observed our earth from above, they decided it was suitable for their use and descended. Their plan was the usual one, which had never failed them hitherto. They would terrorize us, use our home as a base, and range about gathering specimens of plants, animals, and minerals. That is the reason their ship is so big, with so much empty space. ’Twas to be a veritable Noah’s ark. When they returned home and reported their findings, a fleet would come to attack all mankind.”
“Hmmm,” said Sir Owain. “We stopped that much, at least.
We were both cushioned against the frightful vision of our poor folk being harried by unhumans, destroyed or enslaved, because neither of us really believed it. I had decided that Branithar came from a distant part of the world, perhaps beyond Cathay, and only told these lies in the hope of frightening us into letting him go. Sir Owain agreed with my theory.
“Nonetheless,” added the knight, “we must certainly learn to use the ship, lest more of them arrive. And what better way to learn, than by taking it to France and Jerusalem? As my lord said, ’twould in that case be prudent as well as comfortable to have women, children, yeomen, and townsfolk along. Have you asked the beast how to cast the spells for working the ship?”
“Yes,” I answered reluctantly. “He says the rudder is very simple.”
“And have you told him what will happen to him if he does not pilot us faithfully?”
“I have intimated. He says he will obey.”
“Good! Then we can start in another day or two!” Sir Owain leaned back, eyes dreamily half closed. “We must eventually see about getting word back to his own people. One could buy much wine and amuse many fair women with his ransom.”
Chapter III
And so we departed.
Stranger even than the ship and its advent was that embarkation. There the thing towered, like a steel cliff forged by a wizard for a hideous use. On the other side of the common huddled little Ansby, thatched cots and rutted streets, fields green beneath our wan English sky. The very castle, once so dominant in the scene, looked shrunken and gray.
But up the ramps we had let down from many levels, into the gleaming pillar, thronged our homely, red-faced, sweating, laughing people. Here John Hamewaid roared along with his bow across one shoulder and a tavern wench giggling on the other. There a yeoman armed with a rusty ax that might have been swung at Hastings, clad in patched wadmal, preceded a scolding wife burdened with their bedding and cooking pot, and half a dozen children clinging to her skirts. Here a crossbowman tried to make a stubborn mule climb the gangway, his oaths laying many years in Purgatory to his account. There a lad chased a pig which had gotten loose. Here a richly clad knight jested with a fine lady who bore a hooded falcon on her wrist. There a priest told his beads as he went doubtfully into the iron maw. Here a cow lowed, there a sheep bleated, here a goat shook its horns, there a hen cackled. All told, some two thousand souls went aboard.
The ship held them easily. Each important man could have a cabin for himself and his lady — for several had brought wives, lemans, or both as far as Ansby Castle, to make a more social occasion of the departure for France. The commoners spread pallets in empty holds. Poor Ansby was left almost deserted, and I often wonder if it still exists.
Sir Roger had made Branithar operate the ship on some trial flights. It had risen smoothly and silently as he worked the wheels and levers and knobs in the control turret. Steering was childishly simple, though we could make neither head nor tail of certain discs with heathenish inscriptions, across which quivered needles. Through me, Branithar told Sir Roger that the ship derived its motive power from the destruction of matter, a horrid idea indeed, and that its engines raised and propelled it by nullifying the pull of the earth along chosen directions. This was senseless. Aristotle has explained very clearly how things fall to the ground because it is their nature to fall, and I have no truck with illogical ideas to which flighty heads so easily succumb.
Despite his own reservations, the abbot joined Father Simon in blessing the ship. We named her Crusader. Though we only had two chaplains along, we had also borrowed a lock of St. Benedict’s hair, and all who embarked had confessed and received absolution. So it was thought we were safe enough from ghostly peril, though I had my doubts.
I was given a small cabin adjoining the suite in which Sir Roger lived with his lady and their children. Branithar was kept under guard in a nearby room. My duty was to interpret, to continue the prisoner’s instruction in Latin and the education of young Robert, and to act as my lord’s amanuensis.
At departure, however, the control turret was occupied by Sir Roger, Sir Owain, Branithar, and myself. It was windowless, like the entire ship, but held glassy screens in which appeared images of the earth below and all the sky around. I shivered and told my beads, for it is not lawful for Christian men to gaze into the crystal globes of Indic sorcerers.
“Now, then,” said Sir Roger, and his hooked face laughed at me, “let’s away! We’ll be in France within the hour!”
He sat down before the panel of levers and wheels. Branithar said quickly to me: “The trial flights were only a few miles. Tell your master that for a trip of this length certain special preparations must be made.”
Sir Roger nodded when I had passed this on. “Very well, let him do so.” His sword slithered from the sheath. “But I’ll be watching our course in the screens. At the first sign of treachery—”